Religion Blog

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoCharles Krupa | Associated PressMariam Yahya Ibrahim, whose back is to the camera, arrives in Manchester, N.H. She had faced a death penalty in Sudan for leaving Islam for Christianity.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — A Sudanese woman who was sentenced to death for converting from Islam to
Christianity, then detained after her conviction was quashed, arrived in the United States
yesterday.

Mariam Yahya Ibrahim went to Manchester, N.H., where she has relatives and where she was greeted
by a crowd from the local Sudanese immigrant community who sang and handed her bunches of
flowers.

“I can’t describe the feeling,” said her husband, Daniel Wani, who had traveled with Ibrahim and
their two children from Rome, where the couple had been recovering after Ibrahim’s release by the
Sudanese government.

“We are so tired,” Wani said at Manchester airport. “The ordeal is over.”

Ibrahim smiled and waved to the crowd of about three dozen supporters, but she did not speak
publicly.

Since leaving Sudan after her sentence and detention triggered international outrage, Ibrahim
had been in Rome, where the family met with Pope Francis.

She touched down in the United States at Philadelphia International Airport, where she briefly
met with that city’s mayor, Michael Nutter.

“It’s very clear she is a tremendously strong woman,” Nutter said after greeting Ibrahim and
giving her family a toy version of the Liberty Bell, one of the city’s historic artifacts. “Ibrahim
is a world freedom fighter.”

Ibrahim, 27, was sentenced to death in May on charges of converting from Islam to Christianity
and marrying a Christian South Sudanese-American.

Her conviction was quashed in June, but Sudan’s government accused her of trying to leave the
country with falsified papers, preventing her departure for the United States.

Renouncing the Islamic faith is punishable by death under many countries’ interpretation of
Islamic law.